POWERbreathe and Dani Wyss, Ultracyclist

Our POWERbreathe friends and distributor in Switzerland have announced that they will be working with ultracyclist Dani Wyss as he trains again for the 2013 Race Across America (RAAM).

Dani is already two-time winner of RAAM, a 3000 mile non-stop cycling challenge which he completed in just 8 days, cycling from the East coast of America to the West Coast. He’s also the 2012 winner of Race Across the West which he won in record time, and he’s also holder of various world records in ultracycling.

Dani’s advice to anyone competing in a sporting challenge is to never try anything new in a competition without having tried it out during training, and so he’ll be using the POWERbreathe K5 with Breathe-Link software as part of his training from now on.

The POWERbreathe K5 will offer an advantage over the competition as Dani will use it to train his breathing muscles to improve their strength and stamina and make his breathing feel easier, and the Breathe-Link software will help him monitor and assess his performance and improvement with its:

As a cyclist, the hunched position adopted during cycling can create breathing problems, as the contents of the abdomen become compressed and push up against the diaphragm. This restricts movement and makes breathing feel much harder. Research into breathing effort in cycling showed that cycling as little as 20km at race pace induces significant fatigue of the inspiratory muscles, yet training these breathing muscles with POWERbreathe inspiratory muscle training:

Improved cycling time trial performance by 4.6% - equivalent to slashing 3-minutes off a 40k time trial

Enabled participants to cycle for 33% longer and with lower sense of effort

Increased inspiratory muscle strength by 30 – 50%

All this should stand Dani in good stead for the 2013 Race Across America (RAAM) - the world’s top endurance event - which is not a stage race, but one continual stage, similar to a cycling time trial. It is also about 30% longer than the Tour de France, so improved breathing stamina and endurance will benefit him greatly.

Dani will also use the POWERbreathe K5 to warm up the inspiratory muscles prior to training, alleviating the feeling of breathlessness from the start, and again at the end of training to help speed lactate clearance and aid recovery.

Read more about why you should include POWERbreathe IMT as part of your cycling training, or if you’re a cyclist and are already using POWERbreathe, then please leave a comment here or on the POWERbreathe Forum as we’d love to hear about how you’ve benefited from this breathing training.